Prosoft’s CIW E-Commerce Designer Exam in Beta…

Prosoft Learning, which administers the Certified Internet Web Professional (CIW) credentialing program, is seeking participants for beta testing of its E-Commerce Designer certification exam. The beta phase of development for this certification will last from Nov. 30 of this year to Jan. 6, 2006, said Dr. James Stanger, Prosoft’s vice president of certification and product development.

Prosoft is looking for a few hundred candidates for beta testing. While many of these will come from the organization’s academic partners, Stanger encourages people all skill and experience levels to participate so Prosoft can garner the statistics it needs to build a solid, polished final exam. “We’re looking for people across the board, but if we were to get a majority of anyone, it would be people who are advanced and have been working in e-commerce for years,” he said.

Interestingly, the beta testing stage of E-Commerce Designer redesign kicks off the same day that Prosoft’s revamped Site Designer certification goes live. The latter is different in that it focuses more on artistic topics such as symmetry and balance. “E-Commerce Designer targets people who want to manage a business online,” Stanger said. “The skills sets include configuring e-commerce-type servers, and going in and getting databases going. They have to know databases very well, and they also have to understand the project management side of it. They have to know how to set up branding, and learn how to approach everything from a business perspective. Although that’s not absent in Site Designer, it’s emphasized much more in the E-Commerce certification. Site Designer targets people who make good-looking pages.”

The changes to both of these represent a considerable overhaul within the CIW program, he added. “What’s exciting about this is it’s finishing out a full refresh of our entire Master Designer track, which has been our most successful. The psychometricians’ office we’ve contracted with has been consistently impressed with the data that’s coming back. It’s neat to see that the hard work we put in this spring and summer is resulting in a really strong exam. It’s nice to see that completed so we can move on to other things.”